Greetings all. I believe I screwed up today, because I should have been upgraded and was not. I would appreciate your insights so this does not happen again. By way of background, since 2005 I have been Silver 4 years, Gold 1 year, and Pond Scum (the one even worse than Silver) one year. Long term low level elite. I actually fly in first class a fair amount, but that is because I either buy it or buy a Y/B fare which upgrades automatically. I have only been regular upgraded once on Continental (and twice on Northwest), and that was 5 years ago. Long story short, I don't know what I am doing.

Yesterday (18 October) I booked a flight for today (19 October). The routing was MAF to IAH on CO2088 and IAH to AUS on CO 35. When I got to IAH I saw I had plenty of time to make an earlier flight. As a bonus, CO 1541 also had lots of open seats in first class. At the time, pda.continental.com was showing only 12 of 16 seats booked with only one person on the waitlist. Score, says me. I went to the IAH North P Club and had them waitlist me for that flight. While enjoying some delicious gumbo, I notice that I am now on 1541 and am the first of two people on the waitlist for first class. It still shows only 12 of 16 seats booked, and all 12 are checked in.

It gets time to board, so I collect my boarding pass for 10F. I knew that F was wide open, so I saw no need to be pushy with the agent. I just sheepishly took my boarding pass, boarded the plane, and figured they would come get me the way I had seen them come on the plane to get other people who had been battlefield upgraded. While I am sitting on the plane, I notice that F is now only booked to 9 seats-- I assume some people misconnected. Yeah! I will now certainly enjoy a free alcoholic beverage, and the half hour flight will be just enough time to watch a news show on Direct TV. I was still listed as the first of two people on the upgrade list.

And then they closed the cabin door and we pushed back. There weren't any shenanigans with seating non-revs instead of me-- a man in a pilot's uniform walked to the back, and first class looked about half empty. It is not that big a deal, because there was an empty middle seat and I had a good book. Still, what probably happened here, and why was I (nor the other person on the upgrade list) upgraded when there were empty first class seats?